St. Landry democrat., 1887-09-10

ticularlv. When one is sufficiently accus-
, toned to the All to feel confidence that
it will not melt the gold filling in teeth,
it becomes rather agreeable.
With the san coche we had some superb
boiled yams-much better than any po-
tatOes | ever ate-anu Ly0cks-l don't
know whether that word is rightly
spelled or not, for my Spanish dictlon-
aries ignore it, but that is the way 1t
sounds. 1t is probably derived from aa,
a bundle. 1t signifies little bundle or
an ounce or two of some finely com
minuted stuff, done up in bit OF
plantain leaf and boiled. You never
know beforehand, and seldom after eat
ing it, what your ly0chi is composed or
1t may be meat, fish, fowl, vegetables or
sWeetmeats, or any two, three or tour
of those things mixed Fastidlous per
sons sometimes object to lyacki because OF
the mystery surrounding it. They are
wrong, for it generally tastes well.
The corn dough- balls were soft, sticky,
cold inside, heavy as lead and little
sour. | did rot like them. But those
very familiar hens were so fond OF them
that they flew up on the table constantly
and peCkcd pieces from beside our plates
and even out of our hands. One hen had
quite comical appearance. To divert
her attention from the subject of set
ting" they had polcd long tailfeather
through her nOstrils. 1t stuck out three
or four inches on each side of her beak,
and looking at it seemed to have made
her crOss-cyed, so that when she snapped
at a dOugh-ball she was liable to dip into
the sun coche and go away hurrledly,
shouting Fire - in chicken lingo, only to
return for another attempt two minutes
later. The best bread we had was plan
tains, baked without their skins in the
ashes-not at AN bad substitute.
After dinner we had delicious coffee,
strong and fine. The natives buy their
coffee unhulled generally, fresh from
the plantations, half roast it, club off
the hulls, reroast and grind it, and no.
body anywhere has any better coffee.
While we slipped the fragrant decoction
a couple of wild "paraonlatas," or Ven
ezuelan hooking birds, perched upon
the branches overhead unheeding the
noise below, sang exquisltcly.
Pope, a humble seryitor Of the family,
brought up from little bay about an
eighth of mile distant a barrow full of
shelltish of all conceivable sorts, sizes,
shapes and colOrs. There must have
been forty or fifty varieties, from little
uniyalves not bigger than shirt button
up to huge horny COnchs as big as a
mans head. All were dumped together
into large kettle and boiled for nearly
an hour while we smoked and slipped
coffee Then they were heaped upon
the table before Us and we picked and
pOked out the contents of the shells
with pins, sticks, forks and knives,
occasionally smashing the ones that
were hard to get at. 1t was i'm
possible to determine which of them
were most unspeakably vile. Each
in turn seemed more utterly eXecrable
than those that had preceded it. Per-
haps nice discriminating palate might
have awarded to the pearl oysters the
palm for intoleratle badness, for they
combined the extreme saltiness, bitter
ness, iodine smell, sandiness and f1abbi-
ness that were the severallv distinguish
ing characteristics of number of others.
AS for the conchs, they seemed to be
made of India rubber, and could by no
possibility be chewed The natives said
that few days boiling would soften
them somewhat.
The finale of our tropical feast was a
huge pile of shaved cocoa-nut meats
rolled in melted brown sugar and thor
oughly coated with it in cooling-eXces-
sively and cloyingly sweet, but pleas
antly favored. And we had new rum.
J. H. CoNNEALY.